Cincinnati police are firing guns more often

CINCINNATI (AP) - Shootings by police at suspects have increased sharply in Cincinnati, including three over a five-day span.

CINCINNATI (AP) — Shootings by police at suspects have increased sharply in Cincinnati, including three over a five-day span.

The increase comes at a time when City Council members are being asked to consider proposed budget cuts that could include more than 40 police officer layoffs.

So far, there have been nine “officer-involved” shootings — those in which officers fire guns — this year, compared with two last year and six for 2009, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported last week. There are normally four to six officer-involved shootings in Cincinnati during a year, police Lt. Col Vince Demasi told the newspaper.

City Councilman Charlie Winburn pointed to the shootings when he urged the mayor and other council members last Monday to reject police layoffs the city manager is proposing to help fill a $5 million budget hole this year.

Winburn has said the city needs to show it stands behind police amid the increased violence and “ recent attacks on police officers and citizens.”

No one was injured in the latest shooting, when police say an officer fired at a suspect on Tuesday night after he pointed a gun at them. But that shooting came after a weekend in which an officer fatally shot an armed teenager on Fountain Square and a man was critically wounded by police after he opened fire near the Findlay Market downtown.

Two of this year’s shootings resulted in an officer killing a suspect. In all nine cases, the officer believed he was being threatened with deadly force, according to police records. In at least five cases, the officers said suspects pointed guns at them, and police said the suspect at Findlay Market shot at officers.

Authorities are troubled and puzzled by the increase.

Demasi says a lot of it “goes back to kids carrying guns.”

“We really just never had that before, not to this extent,” he said.

The 35-year police veteran said it was once unusual to find a gun during an arrest. Now police confiscate two or three a day. Officers recovered 1,120 guns in 2010 and 663 so far this year, city police records show.

The department’s use of force policy — standard across the country — says that an officer confronted with deadly force can respond with deadly force.

Scott Greenwood, a civil-liberties advocate who helped develop Cincinnati’s policy, also is puzzled by the rise in officer-involved shootings.

“That young people think pulling a firearm on an officer is OK is just bewildering,” he said.

Investigations into some shootings are pending, but none of the officers has faced criminal charges so far.

David Klinger, a criminology professor at the University of Missouri, said some other cities also have experienced similar increases, but it “would be pure speculation to offer any explanation.”

He said community members need to tell their kids to stop pulling guns on officers.